A report on Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and Major League Baseball

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league.

The two remaining original NL franchises, Boston and Chicago, remain still in operation today as the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs.

With the merger, the NL absorbed the St. Louis Browns (now known as the St. Louis Cardinals), along with three other teams that did not survive into the 20th century (for those three teams, see Partnership with the American League below).

The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division.

In 1931, Joe McCarthy, who was previously manager of the Chicago Cubs, was hired as manager and brought the Yankees back to the top of the AL. They swept the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series, and brought the team's streak of consecutive World Series game wins to 12.

The St. Louis Cardinals are in second place with 11 World Series championships with their last win in 2011.

The Reds compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division, and were a charter member of the American Association in 1881 before joining the NL in 1890.

In other deals that proved to be less successful, the Reds traded Gary Nolan to the California Angels for Craig Hendrickson; Rawly Eastwick to the St. Louis Cardinals for Doug Capilla; and Mike Caldwell to the Milwaukee Brewers for Rick O'Keeffe and Garry Pyka, as well as Rick Auerbach from Texas.

In, the Reds were in the newly created National League Central Division with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, and fellow rivals Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros.

The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL).

The two most prolific World Series winners to date, the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals, did not win their first championship until the 1920s; and three of the teams that were highly successful prior to 1920 (the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs) went the rest of the 20th century without another World Series win.

The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division.

The White Sox are one of two MLB teams based in Chicago, the other being the Chicago Cubs of the National League (NL) Central division.

La Russa went on to manage in six World Series (winning three) with the Oakland A's and St. Louis Cardinals, ending up in the Hall of Fame as the third-winningest manager of all time.

The Diamondbacks compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division.

Brennaman was the TV announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds (along with his father Marty Brennaman) before being hired by Diamondbacks founder Jerry Colangelo in 1996, two years before the team would begin play.

Former Diamondbacks third baseman Matt Williams also did color commentary on occasion, as did former Cardinals and NBC broadcast legend Joe Garagiola, Sr., a longtime Phoenix-area resident and father of Joe Garagiola, Jr., the first GM of the Diamondbacks (as head of the Maricopa County Sports Authority in the early 1990s, Garagiola, Jr. was one of the primary people involved in Phoenix obtaining a Major League Baseball franchise).

Spring training is the preseason in Major League Baseball (MLB), a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season.

The location of Hot Springs and the concept of getting the players ready for the upcoming season was the brainchild of Chicago White Stockings (today's Chicago Cubs) team President Albert Spalding and Cap Anson.

Early training sites include the St. Louis Cardinals in Hot Springs and Tulsa, Oklahoma; the New York Yankees in New Orleans and later Phoenix, Arizona, when the team was owned by Del Webb; the Chicago Cubs in Los Angeles when owned by William Wrigley Jr.; the St. Louis Browns and later the Kansas City Athletics in San Diego and then in West Palm Beach, Florida; the Pittsburgh Pirates in Dawson Springs, Kentucky around 1915 and Honolulu, while other teams joined in by the early 1940s.

During his Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he played for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Browns.

The St. Louis Browns were a Major League Baseball team that originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers.

This referred to the original name of the 1880s club that was called the Brown Stockings, and by 1900 had become known as the St. Louis Cardinals.

Under the deal, the Browns would buy the Chicago Cubs' top affiliate, the Los Angeles Angels; in those days, whoever owned a minor league team owned the major league rights to that city.

His Major League Baseball (MLB) playing career spanned from 1986 to 2001 while playing for the Oakland Athletics and the St. Louis Cardinals, winning one World Series championship each, with Oakland as a player in 1989 and with St. Louis as a coach in 2011.

Mason was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the eighth round of the 2022 MLB draft.